Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore

A’s pen happened to be pointing whenever the bell rang. This happened whenever one of the sitters at the table made the simple movement necessary to tilt it. Under these conditions, A and B are apparently mere automata. C, D, and E are little more, being unconscious of tilting the table, which appears to them to tilt itself; but even if they tilted it consciously, and with a conscious desire to dictate words, they have no means of ascertaining at what letter A’s pen is pointing at any particular moment; and they might tilt for ever without producing more than an endless series of incoherent letters. Things being arranged thus, a sixth operator, F, stationed himself apart both from the tilting table and from the alphabet, and concentrated his thought on some word of his own choosing, which he had not communicated to the others. The three sitters at the first table engaged in conversation, sang, or told stories; but at intervals the table tilted, the bell rang, and B wrote down the letter which A’s pen was opposite to at that moment. Now, to the astonishment of all concerned, these letters, when arranged in a series, turned out to produce a more or less close approximation to the word of which F was thinking.

      For the sake of comparing the results with those which pure accident would give, M. Richet first considers some cases of the latter sort. He writes the word NAPOLEON; he then takes a box containing a number of letters, and makes eight draws; the eight letters, in the order of drawing, turn out to be U P M T D E Y V He then places this set below the other, thus:—

      N A P O L E O N

      U P M T D E Y V

Taking the number of letters in the French alphabet to be 24, the probability of the correspondence of any letter in the lower line with the letter immediately above it is, of course 1/24; and in the series of 8 letters it is more probable than not that there will not be a single correspondence. If we reckon as a success any case where the letter in the lower line corresponds not only with the letter above it, but with either of the neighbours of that letter in the alphabet¹ (e.g., where L has above it either K, L, or M), then a single correspondence represents the most probable amount of success. In the actual result, it will be seen, there is just one correspondence, which happens to be a complete one—the letter E in the sixth place. It will not be necessary to quote other instances. Suffice it to say that the total result, of trials involving the use of 64 letters, gives 3 exact correspondences, while the expression indicating the most probable number was 27; and 7 correspondences of the other type, while the most probable number was 8. Thus even in this short set of trials, the accidental result very nearly coincided with the strict theoretic number.

      We are now in a position to appreciate the results obtained when the factor of “mental suggestion” was introduced. In the first experiment made, M. Richet, standing apart both from the table and from the alphabet, selected from Littré’s dictionary a line of poetry which was unknown to his friends, and asked the name of the author. The letters obtained by the process above described were J F A R D; and there the tilting stopped. After M. Richet’s friends had puzzled in vain over this answer, he informed them that the author of the line was Racine; and juxtaposition of the letters thus—

      J F A R D

      J E A N R

      shows that the number of complete successes was 2, which is about 10 times the fraction representing the most probable number; and that the number of successes of the type where neighbouring letters are reckoned was 3, which is about 5 times the fraction representing the most probable number. M. Richet tells us, however, that he was not actually concentrating his thought on the author’s Christian name. Even so, it probably had a sub-conscious place in his mind, which might sufficiently account for its appearance. At the same time accident has of course a wider scope when there is more than one result that would be allowed as successful; and the amount of success was here not nearly striking enough to have any independent weight.

      It is clearly desirable—with the view of making sure that F’s mind, if any, is the operative one—not to ask a question of which the answer might possibly at some time have been within the knowledge of the sitters at the table; and in the subsequent experiments the name was silently fixed on by F. The most striking success was this:—

      Name thought of: C H E V A L O N

      Letters produced: C H E V A L

      Here the most probable number of exact successes was 0, and the actual number was 6.

      Taking the sum of eight trials, we find that the most probable number of exact successes was 2, and the actual number 14; and that the most probable number of successes of the other type was 7, and the actual number 24. It was observed, moreover, that the correspondences were much more numerous in the earlier letters of each set than in the later ones. The first three letters of each set were as follows—

      J F A—N E F—F O Q—H E N—C H E—E P J—C H E—A L L

      J E A—L E G—E S T—H I G—D I E—D O R—C H E—Z K O

      Here, out of 24 trials, the most probable number of exact successes being 1, the actual number is 8; the most probable number of successes of the other type being 3, the actual number is 17. The figures become still more striking if we regard certain consecutive series in the results. Thus the probability of obtaining by chance the three consecutive correspondences in the first experiment here quoted was 1/512; and that of obtaining the 6 consecutive correspondences in the C H E V A L O N experiment was about 1/100,000,000.

      The experiment was repeated four times in another form. A line of poetry was secretly and silently written down by the agent, with the omission of a single letter. He then asked what the omitted letter was; it was correctly produced in every one of the four trials. The probability of such a result was less than 1/300,000.

      And now follows a very interesting observation. In some cases, after the result was obtained, subsequent trials were made with the same word, which of course the agent did not reveal in the meantime; and the amount of success was sometimes markedly increased on these subsequent trials. Thus, when the name thought of was D’O R M O N T,

      the first three letters produced on the first trial were E P J

      the first three letters produced on the second trial were E P F

      the first three letters produced on the third trial were E P S

      the first three letters produced on the fourth trial were D O R

      Summing up these four trials, the most probable number of exact successes was 0, and the actual number was 3; the most probable number of successes of the other type was 1 or at most 2; and the actual number was 10. The probability of the 3 consecutive successes in the last trial was about 3/10,000.

      In respect of this name d’Ormont, there was a further very peculiar result. On the fourth trial, the letters produced in the manner described stood thus—D O R E M I O D.

Thus, if the name thought of were spelt D O R E M O D, the approximation would be extraordinarily close, the probability of the accidental occurrence of the 5 consecutive successes being something infinitesimal.¹ Now, as long as we are merely aiming at an unassailable mathematical estimate of probabilities for each particular case, it does not seem justifiable to take ifs of any sortinto consideration. M. Richet, who was the agent, expressly tells us that he was imagining the name spelt as d’Ormont; and on the strict account, therefore, the success reached a point against which the odds, though still enormous, were decidedly less enormous than if he had been imagining the other spelling. But when we are endeavouring to form a correct view of what really takes place, it would be unintelligent not to take a somewhat wider view of the phenomena. And such a view seems to show that in those underground mental regions where M. Richet’s results (if more than accidental) must have had their preparation, a mistake or a piece of independence in spelling is by no means an unusual occurrence. The records of automatism, quite apart from telepathy, afford many instances of such independence. Thus a gentleman, writing automatically, was puzzled by the mention of a friend at Frontunac—a place he had never heard of; weeks afterwards his own writing gave